For Chloe Barcelou and Brandon Batchelder, it was not just about having a sweet, compact place of residence – it was a way to get out of a fear. As a production designer who worked on film sets and photo shoots in the 2010s, it seemed to struggle constantly to scratch enough money for basic needs.
“We shared the same vehicle to visit several jobs, to juggle this really crazy schedule and have the feeling that they had worked all the time, but never had enough money to make ends meet or even spend time together,” said Ms. Barcelou, now 35 years old and described the life of the couple in Nashua, nh “It was only this frustrating situation as we get out of it?” “
When they designed the sets and costumes for the independent film “Aimy in A Cage” in 2015, it was both a dream job and a lifeline. Between the money they earned and the materials they could get back from the set after shooting, they thought they could be able to build something.
When Ms. Barcelou has her own home that enables you to rent money, but the resources for a conventional house were missing, he saw a tiny, dragged house online that seemed like a possible solution.
As soon as she mentioned Mr. Batchelder the idea, he accepted her. “Not being excessively dramatic about our situation, but it felt like we could never be homeless when we build a house on wheels,” said Mr. Batchelder, 44. “It could always go with us, no matter what was going on in our lives.”
Mr. Batchelder, an experienced carpenter, spent the next few months to design the house. But with a flair for the fantastic it would not do an easy dandruff. He was inspired by the Hayao Miyazaki film “Howl's Moving Castle”, the ocean ships and stone ships and stones, and designed a structure that could collapse for travel, but then became a home of about 280 square meters with a 10-foot ceiling with a pop-up roof and pop-out walls.
In search of Craigslist, the couple found a driver for 1,000 US dollars as a rolling base in his house. After looking for your own publication on Craigslist in search of a place for the construction of your tiny house, you received an answer from home owners in Hampton, NH, who were ready to use it for free of charge of your garden and electricity.
The project aroused the interest of HGTV, which filmed the construction of the shell of the house, including a manual hoist for the roof, the Mr. Batchelder developed with an old ship wheel, straps and ropes for the show “Tiny House, Big Living”.
The basic structure was completed in just a few months. “We called it a wooden tent,” said Ms. Barcelou. “But there was no sanitary, no electrical, no shelves, nothing.”
In the following years the couple continued to add a comfort of creatures after the other and at the same time learned from their mistakes. Even if the house was largely complete, they began, renovated and reorganized the room.
In his most recent iteration, which was recorded in the book “Tales of a Note So Tiny House”, which is to be published by Rizzoli this month, the kitchen is designed as a highly efficient room in the round. A device Mr. Batcher calls “a not so lazy susan” and offers storage and slide levels under the fridge to access shelves at the top. Around the sink, they built the warehouse shelves that serve as dry rates with drains.
In order to go in the bathroom with their composting toilet and a folding metal items, they built a shower of scrap that they bought for 20 US dollars and were decorated with rivets to remember a U -boat. The shower door has a bullless window from an old crockpot lid that you bought for $ 1.
They obtained most of the materials from scrap sites, second -hand shops, trading items and the roadside and also built elaborate storage walls with pipe and conversion storms that were open to shelves and net storage departments.
The structure of the original structure costs around 10,000 US dollars, and they have spent around 10,000 US dollars for renovation work since then, estimated.
The house on Ms. Barcelou's parents' house is currently parked in New Hampshire, where it is connected to a high -performance extension cable of water supply through heated hoses and electricity. The couple lives full-time in the house and contributes to the family grounds by paying $ 500 a month. But whenever and wherever you want next, you can simply collapse your little house and take it with you.
Even after you have lived in such a small room for a decade, you rarely feel like you need more. “Every time we make an improvement, the room feels a bit larger,” said Batchelder. After all the improvements and changes, he noticed: “It is amazing how much greater it is now.”